Sunday, May 6, 2012

Rock & Roll Hall of Shame, of course...

Actually deserving inductees, the Miracles.

This little tidbit from 1990, and this version by Shauna Snow of theLos Angeles Times:

April 05, 1990: Chili Peppers Singer Convicted: Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of the rock group Red Hot Chili Peppers, was convicted in a Virginia Circuit Court Tuesday of sexual battery and indecent exposure after a concert at George Mason University in Fairfax County, Va., on April 21, 1989. Jurors recommended that Kiedis, 27, be fined $1,000 on each charge. The Circuit Court trial was an appeal of a ruling by a lower court judge, who found Kiedis guilty of both charges and sentenced him to 60 days in jail.

Kiedis, while his bandmates had stood around to block this from public view, "joked" with a member of the campus activities board, who had been sitting backstage on the floor with some friends as the concert wrapped, that she should perform fellatio on him. Oddly enough, she refused, so he pulled his penis from the gym sock he'd been wearing on his genitals as stage costume, and rubbed the flaccid member across her face to encourage her. The band members then ran away, having had their hilarious post-concert joke. She, in her turn, had them busted. Kiedis spent one night of his initial sentence in Fairfax County Jail, and was bailed out pending appeal. In contacting the college booking press (still a mixed medium of paper products and email in 1989), she found that the HOFers had managed to pull similar stunts at a number of their college gigs, and had been able to bribe and cajole their way into their previous targets hushing up about their boyish hijinks...which became valuable supporting testimony for the civil suit the GMU student board member, an acquaintance of mine, filed against them while the criminal case cited above proceeded. I believe Kiedis and co. settled in that case...I heard that, perhaps coincidentally, her parents were able to pay off their house at about that time.

But thank goodness their boring, whiny asses, obsequiously ushered in by Chris Rock, are now ensconced in the Hall of Blame. Rock couldn't think of a better rock, rap, reggae or ska band, he said...which goes beyond the typical awards-show nonsense to utter insanity. They're not even remotely the best at hitting two of those targets simultaneously, albeit they've been whining boringly for longer than such good hyphenates as the Roots or the Go! Team, and even longer than the similarly bad and no duller No Doubt, who are unlikely to be overpraised into the HOF any time soon. But, then, perhaps I'm just particularly put off by the Chili Rapists dishonoring the ceremony at the same time deserving folks such as the elder Donovan Leitch (responsible for some bad behavior, too) and the Miracles are getting that recognition, and even the far more accomplished Beastie Boys, without a member who was a whole day older than I am, till recently...I managed to be enervated enough to forget aboutSherlock's season premiere...ah, well.